Jeremiah 13:15–18

¹⁴¶ Wherefore hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem.

¹⁵Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:

¹⁶¶ Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.

¹⁷Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.

¹⁸¶ And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.

¹⁹From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report.

²⁰For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.

²¹For the Lord shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act.

²²Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord God of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth.

²⁹He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

¹⁹But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.

²⁰For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.

¹⁵And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.

²³Who among you will give ear to this? who will hearken and hear for the time to come?

¹⁰Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

¹⁵But know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants thereof: for of a truth the Lord hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears.

²Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?

⁹¶ Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

²²And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.

²For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

¹⁹The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.

³⁰And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.

¹⁹And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast done; hide it not from me.

⁹And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day:

¹⁰And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

⁵Wherefore ye shall make images of your emerods, and images of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your land.

²¹¶ And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt.

¹²Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness: they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord.

²³I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.

³⁵Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.

¹⁹Though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.

¹⁰He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.

¹¹But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes.

⁸And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.

⁸But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. All that cometh is vanity.

¹REMEMBER now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

²While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:

¹⁹Hast thou utterly rejected Judah? hath thy soul lothed Zion? why hast thou smitten us, and there is no healing for us? we looked for peace, and there is no good; and for the time of healing, and behold trouble!

¹⁵We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!

¹⁷As for us, our eyes as yet failed for our vain help: in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save us.

⁷Give unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people, give unto the Lord glory and strength.

⁸Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name: bring an offering, and come into his courts.

²If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.

¹⁷¶ Therefore thou shalt say this word unto them; Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease: for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous blow.

¹OH that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

⁴¹¶ And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,

⁴²Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.

¹GIVE ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth.

²That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.

³For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:

⁴Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;

³⁵And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul: and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.

³¹And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.

¹⁶For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.

¹⁸Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease.

¹³⁶Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law.

¹¹It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night.

³⁸As the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the Lord.

¹¹Then he remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people, saying, Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock? where is he that put his holy Spirit within him?

¹⁹The cities of the south shall be shut up, and none shall open them: Judah shall be carried away captive all of it, it shall be wholly carried away captive.

²⁰Lift up your eyes, and behold them that come from the north: where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?

¹⁶As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee: neither have I desired the woeful day; thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right before thee.

⁵But if ye will not hear these words, I swear by myself, saith the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation.

¹WOE be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the Lord.

²She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

²⁶And I will cast thee out, and thy mother that bare thee, into another country, where ye were not born; and there shall ye die.

¹²And Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign.

¹⁵And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king’s mother, and the king’s wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land, those carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.

¹²And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers,

¹⁹His prayer also, and how God was intreated of him, and all his sin, and his trespass, and the places wherein he built high places, and set up groves and graven images, before he was humbled: behold, they are written among the sayings of the seers.

¹COME down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.

⁶Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:

²³And humbled not himself before the Lord, as Manasseh his father had humbled himself; but Amon trespassed more and more.

³And Moses and Aaron came in unto Pharaoh, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me? let my people go, that they may serve me.

²⁶And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

¹⁰Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

⁶For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

⁴Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

²And say, What is thy mother? A lioness: she lay down among lions, she nourished her whelps among young lions.

³And she brought up one of her whelps: it became a young lion, and it learned to catch the prey; it devoured men.

⁴The nations also heard of him; he was taken in their pit, and they brought him with chains unto the land of Egypt.

⁵Now when she saw that she had waited, and her hope was lost, then she took another of her whelps, and made him a young lion.

⁶And he went up and down among the lions, he became a young lion, and learned to catch the prey, and devoured men.

⁷And he knew their desolate palaces, and he laid waste their cities; and the land was desolate, and the fulness thereof, by the noise of his roaring.

⁸Then the nations set against him on every side from the provinces, and spread their net over him: he was taken in their pit.

⁹And they put him in ward in chains, and brought him to the king of Babylon: they brought him into holds, that his voice should no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel.

¹⁰¶ Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.

¹¹And she had strong rods for the sceptres of them that bare rule, and her stature was exalted among the thick branches, and she appeared in her height with the multitude of her branches.

¹²But she was plucked up in fury, she was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up her fruit: her strong rods were broken and withered; the fire consumed them.

¹³And now she is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground.

¹⁴And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod to be a sceptre to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.

¹⁰The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.